This one caught us off guard, but Apple just announced the A6 SoC powering the new iPhone 5 features 2x faster CPU and GPU performance compared to the iPhone 4S. Apple reserves major Ax SoC number iterations for architecture changes, combine that with the performance claims as well as some other stuff we've heard offline and there's one conclusion: the iPhone 5 uses ARM Cortex A15 cores inside. Update: It uses a custom Apple core!

Our guess is two cores. No word on the GPU yet.

The A6 is 22% smaller than the A5, although it's not clear if that's a package or die size claim yet. There's a good chance this is built on Samsung's 32nm LP HK+MG process.

The common Internet myth about Apple using Exynos based SoC. No Smasung hasn't make the design ever since they used Mali as their Exynos GPU, and Samsung's A15 wont even have a product shipping it this year.Reply

If the A6 really uses an A15, then that's amazing. By comparison, Nvidia and TI both suck big time. Before, Nvidia had a worse GPU than Apple, but higher clocked quad core CPU. Now though, The Tegra line is worse than Apple in everything. And don't get me started on TI. What a complete joke. The best they have is still the OMAP 4470. Pathetic.

Also, while I agree with the A15 conclusion, but it's still a guess until confirmed. The speed increase alone shouldn't be anything to go on. They could have done that with a 1.6Ghz pair of A9s (like T3). which at 32nm, should be possible.

It's a good time to be an Apple user. As an Android user myself, I only have A9's (or krait) as an option :(Reply

You do realize that Krait is (almost) an A15. In fact it is better than A15's in certain areas (like the fact that it has a 128-bit FPU, instead of 64-bit). Performance wise they will be nearly identical at the same speeds.Reply